More than six years ago, while attending the Super Bowl at Cowboys stadium, I decided that I wanted popcorn. There was plenty of food in the press box at the time, but no popcorn.
So I went out into the stadium, found a cart selling popcorn, and bought a modest-sized plastic tub full of it. For $15. Then, when I got back to the press box and dug in to my $15 bucket of popcorn, I immediately learned it was stale. (Maybe the fresh popcorn cost $30.)
It won’t be that way at Super Bowl LIII. Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay told reporters at the SEC’s preseason media extravaganza that the vow to have cheap food at Falcons home games applies to all games played at the new stadium.
"[W]e will have the exact same prices as you will at all of our games, just like we will at the Super Bowl, just like we will at any game,” McKay said, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Because all of the customers that come in this building are our customers, too, and we’re going to treat them exactly the same way.”
McKay added that restaurant chains on the premises have agreed to charge the same prices at the Falcons stadium location that they charge elsewhere.
“We’re not going to let them come in and up-price people just because they paid to get into the stadium,” McKay said.
It’s a great approach, one that other stadiums will be pressured to follow. Then again, it may not matter. If/when a fan at the Superdome complains about the price of a hot dog and points out how much cheaper they are at the Falcons stadium, the cashier could say, “If you leave now for Atlanta, maybe you’ll be back by halftime.”